'A bit.'
'Did you ever see anything suspicious while you were at Grainger's?'
'Suspicious? Like what?' Her mouth re-formed into a snarl, as if she thought the question ridiculous.
'Like anybody tampering with food. Tinned food in particular.'
'No.'
'Nothing that you can remember?'
'No.'
'Are you sure?'
'I've said so, 'aven't I?'
'Becky!' her mother admonished.
'Are you looking for another job?' I asked.
She turned to me and I felt the chill of her disdain. 'There is nowt,' she stated.
'But you're looking?'
'I'm trying to get my 'ead together.'
'I understand you were moved from the store floor into the warehouse,' Dave said.
Becky's expression changed quickly, from a brief flash of embarrassment, through glee and back to bored stiff again, like a shaft of light through a crack in a wall.
'That cow had me moved,' she said.:
'Becky!'
'Well she is.'
'Which cow would that be, Becky?'
'Mrs Brown. Sharon stuck-up Brown cow.' '[Her mother said: 'Becky, will you try to be polite to the gen? tlemen.'
'It's OK,' I told her with a grin. 'We get much worse.'
'Why did she have you moved?' Dave asked.
'I dropped things.'
Her mother coughed. 'Becky's always had this problem,' she explained. 'She's all fingers and thumbs, keeps dropping things.'
'What did you drop?' Dave asked.
The look of glee returned and lingered this time. 'Jars of things.'
'What sort of things?'
'Beetroot. Pickled onions. Things like that.'
'Big jars?' Dave asked. Now he was smiling.
'Yer. Right big jars.'
I stood up and stretched, rotating my shoulders a couple of times. 'Could we have a word in the kitchen, please?' I said to Becky's mum, and moved towards the door.
The sun shone in through the window and there was a pleasing smell coming from the oven. 'That cup of tea would be most welcome,' I said. She clicked the switch on the kettle and it rumbled into life.
'Sugar and milk?'
'No, just black. Has Becky always been a problem?'
She nodded and turned away from me, and I heard her sniff a couple of times.
'We learned that Becky had left under a bit of a cloud,' I said, 'and we've been looking for someone with a grudge. It's obviously not your daughter but we thought she might have some ideas, give us an insider's view of the company. DC Sparkington will tease it out of her if she's seen anything.'
Her mother poured the tea and handed me a mug.
'Thank you. Is Becky looking for another job?'
'There isn't anything,' her mother replied. 'She goes to the job centre — sometimes I take her — but the only jobs she could do are in catering. And what with her little problem…'
'It sounds difficult.'
'It is. We thought she'd be all right at Grainger's, but we were wrong. Now she doesn't seem bothered. Trouble is, there's no incentive for someone like her. She was on minimum wage, which wasn't too bad for a girl with Becky's qualifications, and most welcome, believe me, but she sees other girls on the estate who are much better off. Girls who went to school with her and are living the life of Riley, getting benefits and the rent paid because they've got kiddies.'
She had a moan about the injustices of the system and we agreed that it was an insoluble problem. Try to do something about it and the children were the ones who paid the price. Dave came through, edging his bulk into the kitchen and rolling his eyes as he saw the mug of tea in my hand. Voices from the other room indicated that the TV was back on. We said thank you and she asked how the poisoned man was. 'He'll live,' I told her.
'Back to t'nick?' Dave asked as he started the engine.
'Yes please, driver. What did you learn?'
'Aha!' he responded. 'Wouldn't you like to know.'
'OK. I'll just sit here patiently waiting for a moment when you might find it convenient to fill me in.'
'Right. Get this: Becky reckons that all-hands Robshaw is screwing old-cow Mrs Brown.'
'Gerraway! All-hands Robshaw. Is she saying that he belongs to the touchy-feely school of management training?'
'Can't leave the girls alone, it would seem.'
'And presumably Mrs Brown is the bespectacled lady called Sharon who brought in the complaints book?'
'Head of human resources, based at the Heckley branch.'
'You did well.'
'There's a bit more. Becky left because she was being bullied. It was OK on the shop floor but started when she was moved to the warehouse. Mrs Brown knew about it but didn't do anything.'
After a while I said: 'Poor kid. What do you reckon's wrong with her?'
'Don't know. When we went in, after a few seconds, I had this flash that she was Down's syndrome. Then I realised that she wasn't, just — what do we say these days? — has learning difficulties.'
'Hmm. I went through the same process.' • 'Makes me realise how lucky we've been with our two.'
'I bet. Have you heard from Sophie yet?'
His shake of the head and ensuing silence were more eloquent than words and I knew I was treading a minefield, so I changed the subject.
'What have you got against Grainger — Sir Morton?' I asked him. 'You didn't exactly take to him when we met.' 'Huh!' 'Go on.' 'I'll tell you in the office.'
But he didn't have the chance to tell me. There was a note on my desk from Pete Goodfellow and another saying that Mr Wood wanted to see me ASAP. Pete had done his homework about Sir Morton, as requested. He was a Foreign and Commonwealth Office man, not army, and had held a junior position at some God-forsaken outpost in the Pacific until hurriedly promoted when his boss drowned while snorkelling. He was stationed in Fiji, and when the Queen, on a tour of the more distant corners of the Commonwealth, unexpectedly changed her itinerary to visit her loyal subjects in Tuvalu, Junior Consul Grainger had filled the breach and ensured that everything went along swimmingly. His reward was promotion and promise of a KCMG, whatever that meant. Grainger's older brother had inherited the burgeoning family business, but he was killed while racing a vintage grand prix car in Belgium and the whole lot passed to Morton, or Sir Morton as he became on leaving the FCO.
A line from Dylan's 'Idiot Wind' flashed through my mind: And when she died it all came to me, I can't help it if I'm lucky. I walked through into the main office and passed the note to Dave.
'Tuvalu?' he said, after considering the note for nearly a minute.
'Yep.'
'Wear the fox hat?'
'It's in the Pacific.'
'Thanks. That pins it down. Fancy a pint tonight?'
'Good idea. Gilbert wants me, I'll be upstairs.'
Gilbert wasn't alone. A tall man with a navy blue sweater and the resigned expression of a long-term political
